Russia hit with new sanctions

The Trump administration is set to slap Russia with new sanctions in retaliation for a chemical attack it carried out against a former spy in Britain earlier this year, the State Department announced Wednesday, flying in the face of President Trump’s repeated wish to develop warmer relations with Vladimir Putin’s government.

Secretary of State Pompeo has signed off on the conclusion that the Kremlin violated international law by attempting to assassinate ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter near their home in Salisbury, England, in March, using a nerve agent known as “Novichok,” a senior State Department official said.

Skripal, 67, a former Russian military intelligence officer who acted as a double agent for British intelligence services in the 1990s and 2000s, survived the attack, but both he and his daughter are expected to have a long road to recovery. Moscow continues to deny that it was behind the attack, which killed one person who was exposed to the nerve agent following the Skripals’ initial poisoning.

Critics have accused the Trump administration of dragging its feet on formally faulting Russia for the chemical attack, considering that a decades-old U.S. law mandates automatic sanctions against any government found guilty of using chemical weapons.